The first question
Why do my marketplace deposits never match my sales reports?
Rationale Services reconciles each settlement to the orders inside it. Marketplaces and payment processors pay you net of commission, advertising charges, fulfilment fees, refunds, chargebacks and reserves, on their own payout cycle. We record gross sales and each deduction in its own account, then tie the net to the deposit.
This is the reconciliation that most sellers skip, and skipping it has one large consequence: your revenue and your costs are both understated by the same amount, so the business looks smaller and leaner than it is. Every margin figure derived from it is wrong. Reconciling settlement by settlement also surfaces fees you did not know you were paying and reserves you had not noticed being held.
- Each settlement reconciled to the orders inside it
- Gross sales recorded, not the net deposit
- Commission, advertising, fulfilment, refunds and reserves each in their own account
- Fees and reserves you had not noticed brought into view
Margin by channel, and inventory that holds up
How do I find out my real margin on each channel?
Rationale Services reports revenue, cost of goods and channel-specific costs separately for each channel you sell through, so you get contribution per channel rather than one blended margin. Commission, advertising, fulfilment, shipping and returns are attributed to the channel that generated them.
Channels are not comparable until this is done. A marketplace with high volume and heavy fees can look like your best channel on revenue and your worst on contribution. Your own site usually looks weaker on volume and much stronger per order. Once contribution per channel is reported consistently in your monthly accounts, decisions about where to push advertising spend and inventory have a basis.
How do you handle inventory and cost of goods across several channels?
Rationale Services records inventory and cost of goods so that stock is valued once and relieved when it sells, whichever channel sold it. Landed cost — the product plus freight and import charges — is carried into the unit cost, so margin reflects what the goods actually cost you.
Sellers commonly treat purchases as an expense when paid. That makes profit swing wildly with buying patterns and tells you nothing about margin. Moving to proper inventory accounting takes an initial count and a decision on costing method, then it runs quietly. Where stock sits in more than one place, including third-party fulfilment centres, we reconcile the quantities so your balance sheet reflects goods you actually have.
Services
The services sellers use most
The same work described elsewhere on the site, built around settlements, channels and stock.
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Bookkeeping
Marketplace and processor settlements reconciled to the orders behind them.
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Accounting and reporting
Monthly accounts with margin reported by channel.
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Taxation
Return preparation on records that already reconcile to each settlement.
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Licenses and registration
Business registration for a new selling entity.
Returns, order volume and scope
What are returns and fees really costing me?
Rationale Services records returns, refunds, chargebacks and each category of platform fee in separate accounts rather than netting them against sales. You see the return rate and the total fee load per channel, as a share of revenue, period over period.
Returns are usually treated as a nuisance rather than a cost line, which is why they go unmanaged for years. Reported properly, the pattern becomes visible: particular products, particular channels, particular times of year. Fees behave the same way. They creep, and nothing in a net deposit tells you they have. Both numbers are actionable once someone can see them, and neither can be seen in a net figure.
Can you handle high order volumes without manual entry?
Yes. Rationale Services works from summary-level data pulled from your platforms, processors and bank feeds, with order detail retained behind it. Nobody keys in individual orders. We build the data path once, then reconcile at settlement and period level, which is what keeps books accurate at volume.
Manual entry collapses as order counts grow, and the usual fix — recording deposits as sales — is worse than the problem. We set up the summaries, agree how often they post, and reconcile each payout. That gives you books that close reliably whether you ship a few dozen orders a month or many thousands.
What does e-commerce bookkeeping cost?
It depends on how many channels and processors need reconciling, order volume, whether inventory accounting is in scope, and how far behind the books are. Rationale Services scopes it with you rather than quoting from a list. See how we work.
Questions
Common questions from sellers
Do you work with my platforms and accounting software?
We work from the reports and exports your platforms produce and with the main accounting packages. What matters is that settlement-level detail is available, which it generally is.
We sell online and in a physical store. Can you handle both?
Yes. Both are reported as channels on the same definitions, with inventory shared across them, so you can see which channel is carrying the business.
Our books are a year behind and the inventory figure is a guess. Where do we start?
With a count and a plan. We agree how far back to rebuild, reconcile the settlements in order, and establish a defensible inventory position to carry forward.
Can you work with us remotely?
Yes. We work remotely with sellers across the United States, and this sector suits it completely, since every record we need is already in a system. See where we work.
See true margin by channel
Tell us which channels and processors you sell through and we will set out what reconciling them would take.